Van het Images of the Future Research Blog:
Within the context of the Images for the Future project the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision is – as mentioned before on this weblog – exploring potential of mobile and location-based access to digital heritage. The goal is to explore how digital heritage can be combined with mobile technology and location awareness to offer an augmented reality (AR) to different types of end users. In this context AR functions by augmenting the physical reality of end users with contextual information using digital means. As part of this exploration Sound & Vision partnered with the V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media to initiate a multidisciplinary research project (later named ClosAR). The goal of the collaboration was explore new approaches to bring the audiovisual (AV) archive closer to its audience using innovative methods of presentation and interaction, such as augmented reality. The ClosAR group is comprised of five members with a background in new media studies, art science, industrial design engineering, and virtual games. In their final report (you can download a PDF version here) Bas Bergervoet, Kate Cunningham, Aestha van Dam, Shauna Jin and Connie Yeh propose seven concept directions as possible starting points for Sound & Vision and V2_, with references to the background research and intermediate process:
The classic archive is static: a tomb where “official” documents, media, and information collect dust. Digital technology opens opportunities for information access and presentation, and most notably, participation. As the archive only exists to be accessed, the relationship between itself and its audience is quite important. Augmented reality (AR) brings dynamic information into the physical world. While Beeld & Geluid seeks to improve its visibility outside of its “Experience” and on- site archive search through mobile access, we explored the off-site extreme. How does moving the context of the archive open up possibilities for new interactions? What is the minimum amount of technology needed to achieve this?